52 d / /atå:ð y '" .. - .(. c: aIe Created in the glorious time of King Louis XIV, Chambord is a magnificent liqueur It has the deepest, richest black raspberry taste of any liqueur in the world. After dinner, lace your favorite liqueur glass'with Chambord, sit back and enjoy Its rich aroma and taste. For other ways to enjoy this delicious liqueur, send for our free recipe book: Chambord Imported from France, Box 1600. New York. NY 10116. Imported by }..a Maison DéJan, Phlla , Pa 33 Proof held to every line of him: the yellowy vessels in his large eyes with their hooded lids, tangled eyebrows rising above his glasses, his upper lip outlined like a woman's, brown in his bloodless face. He raised a hand, and then came up on the plank path to our door and touched us as he said, "I'm afraid I have bad news." Mom is dead, I thought-because when Dad woke us that morning he told us she'd been taken to the hospi- tal. "These things happen, and we have to pray it's the Lord's will. The baby died. You would have had a sister. She was baptized right away. We named her Dacey. It's terrible." He took our hands into his, and in that warmth, with his fingers curling around, glimpses of anatomy unfolded in me and I wished I'd never pounded away at myself on the cot. "That isn't what's bothering me the most. Your mother hasn't been well, as you know. Now the doctors say her condition is serious. Pray for her, please." He turned to leave, then turned back. "Let's not ten the rest of the children for now, O.K.? We'll say she's away for a while. I felt you two were old enough to know." He start- ed down the stairs, then stopped on the landing and turned to us, with the light bulb behind shining around the darkness over his face. "Or we'll tell the younger ones she's in the hospital, no more. Your Aunt Rose Marie will take the girls to her house until things are more settled, and Grandma will be here tomorrow when you get home from school. I'll be at the hospital as much as I can." I heard hammering in the garage the next day and went to the kitchen door and eased its new curtain back. Dad had nailed together the frame of a large box, and now he was sawing across a piece of Masonite whose sur- face was stamped and painted to look like yellow kitchen tiles. He took the piece and covered one end of the frame, pounding it in place with tacks from his mouth, and I felt as if a pair of hands pulled from ice water had been put to my neck. He was building a coffin. For the baby, I thought, and started to gag-that we were so poor he had to do this, that a baby would be buried in it-and looked around for Jerome, my knees so feeble I couldn't leave the window. Dad worked fast covering the four long sides and then set the box up on end, with its top still open, his panting billowing in the freezing air as he stepped back to study it, and then he grabbed up clothes heaped on the floor and started stuffing them in. Her clothes hamper. I gagged again. He picked up a two-by-four, measured it, and was sawing away in a rush: the washstand. T HEN Jerome and I step into the cold vestibule of the church on Saturday, after our weekly instructions for Confirmation, and see our Uncle T om standing inside the double doors, clenching and unclenching his fists. He and other uncles have come to the house to plaster its walls, so that something visible will be finished when Mom returns. Tom shuffles his weight, uneasy, and smiles the tight smile that sends dimples into his cheeks, unshaven now. He waits unti1 the half-dozen others have filed out, and then he's at our height, on his haunches. There are bits of plaster in his hair and eyebrows. He starts to reach for us and then laces his fingers over a knee. "Well!" he says, and his smile trembles. "I suppose you're wondering why I'm here! Your dad says to tell you your ma's been taken to another hospital, a better one, in Peoria. Your dad's there now, and he's called your Grandma Jones She'll be here tomor- row . Your house is in worse shape yet, so I'm driving you to Grandma and Grandpa's for the rest of today. They have games there, you know, that-" He stands, and the movement throws moisture from his eyes in spots onto the floor. He pushes both double doors wide, and we step under his arms into winter sunlight. "Wel1!" he says, and slams his hands against his sides as if searching for gloves, the doors still open, then shoves both hands so deep into his jacket pockets that the corners of the jacket stand out in points. I see a fine rain of sugar snow ticking over curling leaves as far out as I'm able to look, to the mossy cement blocks that enclose the church- yard, where beads of the snow are ricocheting and flying straight up, and hear the ticking grow to a whir like a passing of the years I've spent with Jerome. "Wel1!" T om says again. "Isn't this a fine how-do-you-dof" I raise my eyes enough to see the blacktop, white, while the sound of snow on the leaves insists that this piecemeal world of white will always remain with me, following after these words of his, to the end of my history, and then I taste the circle like rust on